In celebration of the month of love, I have been reflecting a little bit on the book of Corinthians, mainly 1 Corinthians chapter 13. It seems like every February it is easy for me to think back on the four verses in this chapter that simply describe how love acts and does not act. But for today’s focus, we will look at the first quality: patience.
Let me be the first to say that patience is the hardest. My knee jerk reaction to things I don’t like, don’t know anything about or my inability to understand gets me in trouble quickly because my brain is apparently one track in those moments. *sighs*
What is patience? Well according to the Cambridge Dictionary, patience is ‘the ability to wait, or to continue doing something despite difficulties, or to suffer without complaining or becoming annoyed’. Firstly, the words suffer, complaining and annoyed trigger quick reactions. Who likes suffering? Isn’t it easy to complain? And annoyed?…haha, that can come quicker than a person can speak. Let’s be real. Patience can be hard. It can be hard especially when you are excited about something and it’s not happening fast enough or the way you might like it.
But enough harping on myself or anyone who finds this difficult like me. One way to overcome the pitfalls of lacking patiences is slowness. I like to practice slow living. It’s something I have worked on implementing in my own life for a little over a year now. There is a lot to say about slow living but for the purposes of this post, I will not go deeper into it. Hopefully, in the future, I can share more about what it means to me because taking things slow and purposeful is what helps me keep calm and accomplish simple tasks that sometimes I’d rather just jump over or avoid altogether.
To recap, one way to love is to be patient. Practice patience in the little things so that the big things will not be so hard to overcome. When we choose to practice patience with others or ourself, we are learning how to love better.
Peace my friends!